http://www.mathies.com/weblog Jim Mathies's Web Log Fri, 10 Sep 2010 02:05:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Great shot from Valle Crucis, North Carolina, courtesy of the BlueRidgeBlog. http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1738 “Why were you in China?” asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron. “None of your business,” I said. Her eyes widened in disbelief. awesome. http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1734 "The leading indicators - new orders, unfilled orders and vender deliveries all fell and point to further severe weakness in the headline measure ahead. It was the coincident and lagging indicators such as production, inventories and employment that drove up the headline number. Some of the regional subcomponents (eg Philadelphia ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1732 It's been far too long, as I've been wrapped up in life and work. I should try and post more, preferably, about things other than politics. It's been a nice holiday though, no doubt about that. http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1724 Berry, Beetle, Apple, and Puma. We have a long way to go. Link http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1722 Use RedrawWindow w/the RDW_FRAME & RDW_INVALIDATE flags and pass a region in hrgnUpdate that includes the non-client area you want to repaint. Note, hrgnUpdate must be in client coordinates, not screen coordinates. So for example if you're invalidating the left hand frame, the x origin will be a negative number, ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1720 Sad. The beaches down here, some of the most beautiful in the country, are ruined. Along with them goes the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people who make their living off the tourist industry. BP may make billions a year, but there's no way any amount of money, no ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1716 In quantum teleportation two photons or ions (for example) are entangled in such a way that when the quantum state of one is changed the state of the other also changes, as if the two were still connected. This enables quantum information to be teleported if one of the photons/ions ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1713 The only reason Greece is not bankrupt now is because even as its past mistakes have caught up with it and climaxed in a solvency and liquidity crisis unseen since the Lehman days, the country's end would bring down all of Europe. If Greece would not have impaired French, German ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1711 Microsoft released a beta today. From preliminary information, it looks like they've addressed most of my gripes with Windows Home Server 1.0. Interesting new features - 1) The ability to backup the entire WHS to a remote drive, at scheduled times. That's nice for snapshotting the whole setup all at ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1704 Something obscure worth feeding to the internets – converting a pc system from headed (with a video card/display) to headless by removing the display AND video card to save on power can have some strange effects on your system. For one thing this will enable the default vgasys video ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1696 "In short, GM is using government money to pay back government money to get more government money. And at a 2% lower interest rate at that." Link http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1694 "This is mind-boggling. There's no possible technical justification for this. It's pure evil." Link http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1691 I just touched up a number of encoding issues post a Word Press upgrade. A number of old posts might show up as recent... sorry for the blog spam. http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1689 For a company whose CEO professes a hatred of DRM, Apple sure has made DRM its alpha and omega. Having gotten into business with the two industries that most believe that you shouldn't be able to modify your hardware, load your own software on it, write software for it, override ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1674 As for the Treasury Department, they'll be selling a whopping $165 billion in debt this week including some $82 billion in long-dated issues - $40 billion 3-year notes, $21 billion in 10-year notes, $13 billion in 30-year bonds, and $8 billion in 10-year TIPS. This has become almost a routine, ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1671 In short, if you believe that the economic growth since 1996 was robust enough to justify the doubling of home prices during that time, then perhaps home prices are now at the 'correct' levels. But if you believe that most of the economic growth since 1996 was built on ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1668 Based on what I've been reading, the type of healthcare plan I prefer when I'm consulting would be outlawed under Obamacare. The last catastrophic coverage plan I had, an HDHC from Blue Cross, cost me approximately $1450.00 per year. This plan would not fall under the acceptable plan guidelines of ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1659 So what is it actually like? Well, it's a lot like the Zune HD. In fact -- it's just like the Zune HD... but more. Microsoft says it's drawn on its Zune and Windows Media Center UI concepts and come up with something it calls "Metro." A typographic and motion ... http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1652 OOPP - A very intertesting project. Still lots of work to do, but it's coming along. http://www.mathies.com/weblog/?p=1648